When should you bring up sex With a part­ner?

(whether it’s ca­sual sex or with long-term prospects), a good time to start talk­ing about sex is, oh, prob­a­bly around the first time you have it…and then the next time…and then the time af­ter that. it doesn’t have to be a big dis­cus­sion, but fill­ing each other in on what you are and aren’t into sets you up for a sat­is­fy­ing sex life in which it’s not a big deal to bring up an is­sue down the line.

it can seem a bit more stress­ful, since you don’t want your part­ner to think they’ve been get­ting it wrong this whole time. ease into the convo: Start by talk­ing about talk­ing about sex first. “for ex­am­ple, say, ‘we don’t talk too much about what we love and don’t love—and i’d like for us to try to do more of that. what do you think?’” by­ers sug­gests. you don’t have to sit down at the kitchen ta­ble for a sex­ual Sona, but start grad­u­ally bring­ing it up. be­gin by giv­ing pos­i­tive feed­back on some­thing your part­ner does that you like. then talk about other stuff you’d like more of. re­mem­ber, it’s a flirty, on­go­ing dis­cus­sion, not a cri­tique!

keep talk­ing about it. don’t think about this as a summit meet­ing that you have with your part­ner once, cross off the list, and never dis­cuss again. in­stead, think of this as start­ing an open di­a­logue. it’s im­por­tant to be able to ex­press your likes and de­sires fre­quently, be­cause what you’re into one day might not be what you’re into next week or next year. “it’s no dif­fer­ent from if you’re walk­ing and you tell your per­son you’d rather take a dif­fer­ent route this time,” says by­ers. “it doesn’t have to be a big deal.”